South American Hippos

[Aardwolf]

This is just a whimsical aside, but the other day I was reading a post by @UngulateNerd92 about fossil hippos from India. My mind first went to the idea of someone building an Elephant Odyssey style exhibit that included hippos, before I settled on a quirkier idea. I'm sure many folks here are familiar with Pablo Escobar's hippos in Colombia. Part of the effort to control the growth of the population has been to relocate individuals from the herd to various zoos. It would be interesting if a zoo that had a South American zoogeographic area included some of these hippos. There's your llanos exhibit, capybara, caiman, anteater... hippo? It would make quite an unexpected exhibit, as well as teach a pretty compelling conservation story.

Of course, a hippo isn't exactly a species that one just shoehorns into an exhibit area on a whim...

 

[pichu]

i, for one, think this would be awesome, especially from an invasive species standpoint. i mean think about it. they are extremely invasive to columbia, and are tearing through the ecosystem, ruining not only the ecosystems, but the crops and agriculture as well

 

[StoppableSan]

This is just a whimsical aside, but the other day I was reading a post by @UngulateNerd92 about fossil hippos from India. My mind first went to the idea of someone building an Elephant Odyssey style exhibit that included hippos, before I settled on a quirkier idea. I'm sure many folks here are familiar with Pablo Escobar's hippos in Colombia. Part of the effort to control the growth of the population has been to relocate individuals from the herd to various zoos. It would be interesting if a zoo that had a South American zoogeographic area included some of these hippos. There's your llanos exhibit, capybara, caiman, anteater... hippo? It would make quite an unexpected exhibit, as well as teach a pretty compelling conservation story.

Of course, a hippo isn't exactly a species that one just shoehorns into an exhibit area on a whim...

Jungle Odyssey at Pittsburgh kinda did this by highlighting African/Madagascan and South American animals together, but you're better off having two separate sections - separated by a main path and a trail of interpretive signage.